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You Tell Me

Gretchen Rubin is a lawyer by education, but a student of human nature by choice. Perhaps inspired by her own moment of awakening (she read the work of Gary Taubes, realized a low carbohydrate diet made sense, and changed 100% on the spot), she takes particular interest in the different ways we all achieve personal change. She has come up with a quick little quiz you can take to determine your tendencies when it comes to changing behavior.

Disclaimer: this is not the state of your soul, your worth as a person, your personality, your astrological sign, or your patterns in love and loss.

It's simply a paradigm for understanding how you might best leverage your own innate tendencies about how change happens.

Most of us are obligers: we respond better to others' expectations than to the ones we set for ourselves.

Upholders are every doctor's ideal patient: they respond well to expectations both outer and inner.

Rebels resist all expectations. They might respond to their own expectations (or not) or more likely just the mood of the moment.

And finally, questioners want to know all the details, the pros and cons, and properly weighed: will proceed with the wisest move.

I have to admit, I was surprised by the questions and by the outcome when I took the test. I'm thinking about asking all my patients to take the test, it might help me know best how to help. An obliger might best respond if I ask them to report something meaningful to me. A rebel is just going to have to buy into my recommendations in service of something that that particular rebel really wants. A questioner, okay, I'll pull out all the research and we'll go over it....again.

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